The preferred embodiments relate to transit of items, such as compartments of goods, by moving, arranging, and accelerating items from one system to another, as may be used for example to advance the speed of the goods for placement onto a conveyor or otherwise dispense the items at a speed greater than that which they were earlier moving.
Rotating platforms have been described in numerous patents for dispensing items onto a moving conveyor, as seen for example in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,224,554 and 5,044,487. In these systems, items are transferred to a surface of a rotating platform, and the items then move in an undirected fashion toward the outer perimeter of the platform, after which they are dispensed off of the moving and rotating platform, such as onto a conveyor or bin, either of which adjacent the platform edge. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,852, a similar characterization may be applied, but the items move to a slide and stationary bin, adjacent the rotating platform edge. Often in any of these approaches, and likely because the items move randomly toward the edge of the rotating platform, additional apparatus are located along the platform edge so as to organize, situate, or dislodge the items from one another as they arrive at that edge in a somewhat random manner.
In other rotating platform systems, an item is delivered to one edge of a rotating platform while the platform is not moving, the platform is then rotated so that the item moves to a different angular location, the platform is stopped, and then the item is transferred from the stopped rotating platform, to either a stationary or moving system. Examples of these may be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 4,941,794 and U.S. Pat. No. 7,784,405.
The present inventor has recognized, however, that preferred embodiments may facilitate a profound improvement in movement of items, such as in industrial environments and others where a number of factors combine to provide needs not addressed by the above approaches. Particularly, the preferred embodiments implement a rotating platform system that permits controlled, systematic, and efficient delivery and withdrawal of items onto a moving system or into free space at an accelerated speed as compared to the speed of initial movement of the item on the rotating platform. The preferred embodiment system may vastly reduce energy needs of existing systems in that the item movement may be achieved by allowing a conveyor to continue to advance at either an existing or reduced speed, but in any event without requiring stoppage of the conveyor as items are transferred to it. Moreover, the items may vary in size or shape and yet still may be predictably transferred without a random distribution of the items from the platform center to its edge and in some embodiments without sorting apparatus at the platform edge that is otherwise necessary in the prior art so as to accommodate such approaches. As a result, considerable savings are anticipated in energy, time, and other resources, where such savings otherwise are diminished or lost in the prior art. Further, the preferred embodiment system may profoundly affect the predictability in which items are distributed from the rotating platform, so as also to provide greater efficiencies in item transfer and scheduling.
Still other benefits will be appreciated by one skilled in the art, given an understanding of the discussion below.